Philosophy: Materialism and Idealism

IB Philosophy Core Theme: Materialism and Idealism Core Theme: Monism – Materialism and Idealism > Monism: States that all of reality, everything that exists falls into one and only one basic category of being – there is only one fundamental sort of substance in existence and everything is somehow a configuration of this one substance. – (branch #1) – “idealism; all that exists are minds and ideas, everything else are illusions.” – (branch #2) – “materialism; all that exists is matter, configured into material objects.” Branch #1: > Idealism: The philosophical theory that ideas are the only reality. Bishop Berkeley gave the world its most thorough going introduction to idealist philosophy; according to him, all that exists is the mind and their ideas – there is no such thing as matter and there are no material objects apart from ideas of them. Idealism has fallen out of favor with most philosophers as there seems to be no compelling arguments for the conclusion that nothing exists but minds and ideas. Branch #2: > Materialism: The philosophical denial of the purported reality of things spiritual, metaphysical, or immaterial. – (assumption #1) – “only physical or material things exist.” – (assumption #2) – “there is no need for a ‘soul’ or a non-physical mind to direct the body.” – (assumption #3) – “consciousness is seen as only our brain functions which are part of our physical bodies.”

Evaluation: Identity Theory (reductive materialism): A thought about the weather and a particular state of the brain is believed to be two different ways of referring to the same thing. – (assumption #1) – “the two phrases describe an identical event, but the meaning of the phrases is slightly different.” – (assumption #2) – “mental states are identical to the physical states of the brain: the mind is the brain.” – (assumption #3) – “brain research will be able to show how consciousness is generated in the future.” Against: – (criticism #1) – “if one asserts that two people are having the same thought about something, they are sharing the same brain state, however this is never true.” – if we cannot say that two people are having the same thought, then the idea of identifying thoughts with brain processes become problematic. – (criticism #2) – “we have no direct knowledge about our thoughts, yet most of us know nothing about brain processes – a thought cannot be the same as a brain process because it is possible to know nothing about the thought without knowing anything about brain processes.” – however, the materialist could argue that we don’t need to know the chemical composition of water to understand its concept. – (criticism #3) – “leibniz’s law: all the properties of X and Y are identical if and only if X = Y.” – we are invited to imagine that the universe consists of only two electron which must share every property, and according to the law they must be the same electron, but there are two. – (implication #1) – “it is difficult to see how free will and moral responsibility is compatible with physically determined brain states.” – (implication #2) – “dualism can accommodate for life after death, but materialism cannot.”